Friday, June 25, 2010

I have to decorate in every room of my new flat so I’ve been thinking about colour schemes a lot. Purple is my favourite, probably signature, colour so that is what I’ve decided to use. I found a nice striped fabric in John Lewis which I will use to cover the bedhead and as the basis of the colour scheme.

The stripes are actually straight – the fabric is draped in the photo. The ceiling will be in the cream, the floor and furniture will be in the 2nd down (birch veneer). One wall will be in the deep purple and the other 3 walls in one of the other 2 purples.

I think the creams balance the purples well and I love the deep colour for the feature wall.

Using cream and fawn makes this a classic contrast colour scheme as yellow is opposite purple on the colour wheel – fun to be using all my colour knowledge on such a big scale.

Trying to photograph fabrics in the shop made me realise how much the camera can change the colours I see with me eyes.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

I recently discovered the annual world photo walk which happens on 24th July. There is a map which shows all the places where walks are being organised and more venues are being added all the time. Edinburgh has just been added so I’ll be joining in. The idea is that a group has a walk and takes lots of photos on the way. The Edinburgh one then goes to a bar to share shots and stories. Sounds like fun.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Since the start of the year, while taking a photo a day, I have been thinking about how I will display them all at the end of the year. I knew that I wanted to keep them in 7 day blocks but started the project with no other plans.

Over the last few weeks I’ve decided to make a photobook and I also designed the display in Photoshop Elements. I’ve made all the pages for the year so far. Here is an example of two facing pages from earlier in the year

The photobook will be square (8x8). I’m using a different shade in the background for each double page and changing the colour of the buttons with the date too. The month date stamps are by Lil’s Little Luxury Creations (they have 2010 in the middle which I covered with the button so I could put in the dates)

Thursday, June 17, 2010

the prompt was ‘smooth’ - I thought of many things including ice, smoothies, chrome and polish. Then I remembered the Sade song ‘smooth operator’ and paired it with a photo of the magnificent male tiger at Auckland zoo and added a few Photoshop Element effects.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

my first real play with overlays and blend modes. Didn’t quite get the look I had in mind but stuck to my rule of playing with these prompts for only an hour. I will definitely be experimenting with overlays more.

Used the ‘ornament’ prompt to play with the range of bevel effects in Photoshop Elements and discovered some that I will definitely use again. The background of stapled swatches comes from K Pertiet at Designer e Digitals.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

The word prompt from Creativity Bootcamp today is ‘fly’ and yesterday’s was ‘fluid’. Enjoying using the tools available inside Photoshop Elements to get different looks. Happy with how the bootcamp is leading me to play with different techniques and looks each day. Two responses in this post.

First up playing with the prompt ‘fluid’. Used just fonts, including a dingbat, and the bevel tool.

And a totally different look for today’s prompt ‘fly’. Mostly using the magic selector and opacity again. The photo of the bird was supplied by my bird watching Dad and I had the other two in my photo library. The sentiment was something I was talking to my Mum about earlier this week – so another ‘F’ – family comes into play too.

Really enjoying the word prompts and seeing the range of ways that people respond. I haven’t been doing the journaling prompts at all but feel that what I am doing is enough for a daily activity.

Friday, June 11, 2010

I just bought a flat. Just over a year ago I packed up my stuff and set of for some travelling before moving back to Scotland. I am staying with my sister and parents and have been house hunting near Edinburgh. On Tuesday I made an offer on a flat which was accepted – under Scottish law that agreement is binding so the flat is mine. Very excited.

The flat needs new kitchen and bathroom and every room needs decorating – yeah – a big project to keep me busy. I have piles of brochures that I am looking through and a book of graph paper for plotting room design.

I’m also thinking colour palettes for each room. I love colour so have been thinking about this a lot and gathering inspiration.

For the room that will be my office/crafting room and the guest room I am using this fabric as the inspiration

I used the fantastic colour site, kuler, to create some palettes. The site has lots of created colour schemes but it will also create them from a photo on your computer (or on flikr). You can choose bright, deep and so on and also customise your own.

Here are four that I made from this photo. I’ll be playing some more and using them while looking at some materials before deciding which version to use.

Love this aspect of kuler. I’ve been collecting other images as possible basics for colour range for other rooms. I’ll share them as I work on them.

And expect regular postings on aspects of home decoration over the coming months.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

today’s prompt in creativity bootcamp was ‘grow’ and the journaling prompt started by thinking of music from your youth. My thinking about the concept of ‘grow’ went along the path of ‘growing up’ and soon merged with music from my early teens which by then I was signing.

This is what I made

for those of you who remember the song

and for those of you who were not watching Top of the Pops on the BBC every Thursday evening in 1974

here is the song in all its seventies glamrock splendour – good memories.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

day 3 of bootcamp and the prompt was ‘multilayered’. Now as my chosen medium is photoshop elements I could have done pretty much anything because the real magic and reason for its popularity is the manipulation of multiple layers. So I thought more broadly about layers – cake, rock, personality – that last one seemed a goer.

I used 27 photos of myself taken in 2nd half of last year. I ran the Pioneer Woman action called soft and faded over each one then cut a zagged oval and reduced opacity, mostly to some where in the 30-40% range. And then I piled them all up, pretty haphazard.

It is interesting, different, something I have not done before and totally multilayered.

Monday, June 7, 2010

for this bootcamp we are asked to choose one medium to use for all prompts during the fortnight. I’m going with photoshop elements – not always including a photo. I want to play with the techniques and enjoy the journey rather than focus on the end result. I am also putting a one hour time limit on the play and not allowing myself to go back and start again once I have started responding. So I will not be sharing all of my images.